My son the monster theologian

Mason has recently started telling stories, which all begin "Once Upon a Time..." and invariably include Peter and the Wolf, Lightning McQueen, monsters, or some combination of those. This is the story he told me tonight...

"Once upon a time, the grown-ups woke up from their nap. And they went outside, and there was no wolf. And then they saw a black thing, and it wasn't moving, and they cut it. And then it was moving and it ran away and it was a monster. And the monster ran away to a place where they didn't know, and it was a big black hole. And then the monster went in the big black hole and there were lots of monsters and they were fighting. And then, they weren't fighting and they were nice monsters."

Ok, so I'm thinking, this is great! He is really developing his imagination and he's so smart and wonderful.... But at the same time I'm thinking... cutting, fighting? Where does this come from? Did my sister sneak him into Saw IV? (Kisses to Pnut)

So then he asked why some monsters (like Elmo of course) don't fight and are nice monsters, and I explained that when monsters make good decisions and do what God wants them to, then they never ever hurt people and never fight, and that makes God happy (I think that's in the Bible somewhere although I'm not sure Elmo is mentioned directly). I explained that God is sad when we fight, but He loves the bad monsters anyways.

"Why does God love the bad monsters?"

Because God loves everyone so much no matter what they do, he can never stop loving even when we do the wrong thing and make bad decisions, so he always loves the mean monsters, too.

OK, no one prepared me for this, Monster Theology 101. But I absolutely love these conversations and the amazing things that come out of my kids.